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*Half the Sky*
Turning Oppression
Into Opportunity
for Women Worldwide
by Nicholas Kristof
&
Sheryl WuDunn
Hardcover
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From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era's most pervasive human rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. That Cambodian girl eventually escaped from her brothel and, with assistance from an aid group, built a thriving retail business that supports her family. The Ethiopian woman had her injuries repaired and in time became a surgeon. A Zimbabwean mother of five, counseled to return to school, earned her doctorate and became an expert on AIDS.
Through these stories, Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to economic progress lies in unleashing women's potential. They make clear how so many people have helped to do just that, and how we can each do our part. Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited economic resource is the female half of the population.
Countries such as China have prospered precisely because they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is not only the right thing to do; it's also the best strategy for fighting poverty.
Deeply felt, pragmatic, and inspirational, Half the Sky is essential reading for every global citizen. |
*Infinite Possibilities*
The Art of Living
Your Dreams
by Mike Dooley
Hardcover
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Understanding is the elixir that reveals your place in eternity, and with it your beliefs can be aligned and your imagination ignited to achieve anything you can dream of. We are spiritual beings filled with infinite potential ? adventuring through a field of possibilities, creating our own reality, our own fate, and our own luck.
Infinite Possibilities is a fresh and inspiring look at how each of us can turn within to discover our true purpose, ignite our imagination, and manifest our desires. Mike Dooley explains that our dreams are not accidental or inconsequential, but rather serve as invitations to understand the truths about ourselves, hinting at the lives we can create. Once you learn to open your heart and mind, thinking far beyond what spirituality has traditionally meant, it becomes evident that life itself is the ultimate adventure, filled with opportunities that day by day lead us to discover who we really are and why we are here.
This is a profound exploration into the mysteries of the universe, Infinite Possibilities opens windows, doors, and unexpected pathways to a bold and fulfilling way of living.
Prepare to be astounded and challenged by Mike Dooley's guide to living the life of your dreams ? purposefully, lovingly, brilliantly.
As the next step beyond his 'Notes from the Universe' Dooley's newest tour de force is a guide to overcoming the hardships of our age by believing and harnessing the power to shape the future. |
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*Strength in What Remains*
by Tracy Kidder
Hardcover
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Tracy Kidder's incredibly moving and vivid new book follows and accompanies Deo, a survivor of the genocide in Burundi, through his remarkable journey to America and back home again. Kidder makes the abstract achingly personal and showcases a genuine hero. Beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring. This Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the modern classics Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Soul of a New Machine returns with the extraordinary true story of a young man and his will to survive.
In this remarkable book Kidder once again delivers the masterful story of a hero for these modern times. Deo grew up in the mountains of Burundi, and survived a civil war and genocide before seeking a new life in America. In New York City he lived homeless in Central Park before finding his way to Columbia University. But Deo's story really begins with his will to turn his life into something truly remarkable; he returns to his native country to help people there, as well as people in the United States. |
*You Were Always
Mom's Favorite!*
by Deborah Tannen
Hardcover
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I love her to death. I can't imagine life without her, a woman says about her sister. Another remarks, I don't want anyone to kill my sister because I want to have that privilege myself. With these two comments, begins this eye-opening and entertaining new book.
New York Times bestselling author Deborah Tannen is renowned for illuminating the way we communicate-and revolutionizing relationships in the process. What she did for women and men in You Just Don't Understand, and mothers and daughters in You're Wearing THAT?, she now does for sisters in a groundbreaking book that explores one of the most powerful and perplexing relationships in our lives. Conversations between sisters reveal a deep and constant tug between two dynamics-an impulse towards closeness and an impulse towards competition, as sisters are continually compared to each other. When you're with her, you laugh your head off, and can giggle and be silly like when you were kids. But she also might be the one person who can send you into a tailspin with just one wrong word.
For many women, a sister is both. With a witty and wise voice, Tannen shares insights and anecdotes from well over a hundred women she interviewed, along with moving and funny recollections of her own two sisters. You'll come away with a profound new understanding, as well as effective techniques to improve and accessible solutions for problems in this unique and precious relationship. |
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*Nurtureshock
*New Thinking about Children
by Po Bronson
&
Ashley Merryman
Hardcover
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Though rarely would one refer to a parenting book as a 'page turner', NurtureShock is just that fascinating. Bronson and Merryman call on neuroscience to show how conventional parenting wisdom often doesn't jive with the biological reality of a child's brain.
If you want to learn the science behind how to best praise your child, or understand why teenage rebellion is a good thing, read this book.
In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel? Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter? Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?
If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie? What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?
NurtureShock is a groundbreaking collaboration between award-winning science journalists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. They argue that when it comes to children, we've mistaken good intentions for good ideas.
With impeccable storytelling and razor-sharp analysis, they demonstrate that many of modern society's strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring ? because key twists in the science have been overlooked. Nothing like a parenting manual, the authors' work is an insightful exploration of themes and issues that transcend children's (and adults') lives. |
*The Book of William*
by Paul Collins
Hardcover
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The first popular narrative history of Shakespeare's First Folio, the world's most obsessively pursued book. One book above all others has transfixed connoisseurs for four centuries; a book sold for shillings in the streets of London, whisked to Manhattan for millions, and stored deep within the vaults of Tokyo.
The book: William Shakespeare's First Folio of 1623. Paul Collins, lover of odd books and author of the national bestseller Sixpence House, takes up the strange quest for this white whale of precious books.
Broken down into five acts, each tied to a different location and century, The Book of William's travelogue follows the trail of the Folio's curious rise: a dizzying S otheby's auction on a pristine copy preserved since the seventeenth century, the Fleet Street machinations of the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century quests for lost Folios, obsessive acquisitions by twentieth century oilmen, and the high-tech hoards of twenty-first century Japan. Finally, Collins speculates on Shakespeare's cross-cultural future as Asian buyers enter their Folios into the electronic ether, and recounts the book's remarkable journey as it is found in attics, gets lost in oceans and fires, is bought and sold, and ultimately becomes immortal. |
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*Dark Places*
by Gillian Flynn
Hardcover
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When Libby Day was seven years old, her mother and two sisters were murdered in The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas. Thinking about that night sends Libby straight into what she calls her Darkplace. Michelle was strangled. Debby was chopped up with an axe. And Patty Day's head was blown off with a shotgun.
Darkplace. As the prosecution's star witness, Libby, testified that she saw her brother Ben ? then 15 ? commit the crime. Little Libby escaped into the freezing January snow, losing a few fingers and toes but saving her life. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and Libby is living off the dregs of a trust fund that was set up for her after the murders.
When the Kill Club, a macabre social group obsessed with infamous crimes ? and believers in Ben's innocence ? reaches out to her, Libby hatches a plan to profit from her tragic history: Contact everyone tied to the events of that January night and report back her findings for a fee. And maybe she'll admit her testimony wasn't so solid after all.
Interspersed with Libby's investigation are the events of that day, told through the eyes of her doomed family members ? including Ben. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself back in her Darkplace ? and fighting for her life. |
*The Sword of the Lady*
by S. M. Stirling
Hardcover
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The New York Times bestselling author continues his 'epic of survival and rebirth' (Library Journal), chronicling a modern world without technology. Rudi Mackenzie has journeyed far across the land that was once the United States of America, hoping to find the source of the world-altering event that has come to be known as The Change.
His final destination is Nantucket, an island overrun with forest, inhabited by a mere two hundred people who claim to have been transported there from out of time. Only one odd stone house remains standing. Within it, Rudi finds a beautifully made sword waiting for him, and once he takes it up nothing will ever be the same. |
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*Chronic City*
by Jonathan Lethem
Hardcover
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Available for Pre-Order
For October 13, 2009 |
The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies. Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty.
Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancee, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.
Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency.
Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.
Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique. |
*Life Inc*
How the World
Became a Corporation
And How to Take It Back
by Douglas Rushkoff
Hardcover
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This didn't just happen.
In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they're no longer even aware of it.
This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace, the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business. Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six-hundred-year-old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.
Corporatism didn't evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living-the operating system on which we are now running our social software-was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality.
It is a map that has replaced the territory.
Rushkoff illuminates both how we've become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place. |
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*Peace*
50 Years of Protest
Illustrated
by Barry Miles
Hardcover
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Though some might think it was something the hippies created for their tie-dyed shirts, the peace symbol was really invented by Gerald Holtom, a British graphic artist, as an anti-nuclear-war symbol. This photographic book captures images of pacifism from around the world and traces the history of peace activism from the 50s and 60s up through the Reagan era and the most recent Gulf Wars.
Though most of us are taught the history of war, less is known about the peace movement; Peace would make a great addition to any history curriculum.
One of the most instantly recognized images in the world--the peace sign--celebrates its 50th anniversary. Miles uses a combination of research and personal recall to recount the evolution of this iconic image. |
*That Old Cape Magic*
by Richard Russo
Hardcover
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Following Bridge of Sighs ? a national best seller hailed by the Boston Globe as an astounding achievement and a masterpiece ? Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth.
Jack Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father's ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone.
She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura's best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents' respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that's now thirty years old and has largely come true.
He'd left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they'd moved into an old house full of character; and they'd started a family. Check, check and check. But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura's, on the coast of Maine, Griffin's chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter's new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written. |
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*Girl Who Played With Fire*
UK Edition
by Stieg Larsson
Hardcover
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Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society ? but no-one can find her anywhere.
Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium, will not believe what he hears on the news. Knowing Salander to be fierce when fearful, he is desperate to get to her before she is cornered and alone. As he fits the pieces of the puzzle together, he comes up against some hardened criminals, including the chainsaw-wielding 'blond giant' ? a fearsomely huge thug who can feel no pain.
Digging deeper, Blomkvist also unearths some heart-wrenching facts about Salander's past life. Committed to psychiatric care aged 12, declared legally incompetent at 18, this is a messed-up young woman who is the product of an unjust and corrupt system. Yet Lisbeth is more avenging angel than helpless victim ? descending on those that have hurt her with a righteous anger terrifying in its intensity and truly wonderful in its outcome. |
*Catching Fire*
The Hunger Games #2
by Suzanne Collins
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Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty.
But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Katniss and Peeta get to enjoy the spoils only briefly before they must partake in a Capitol-sponsored victory tour. But trouble is brewing ? President Snow tells Katniss directly he won't stand for being outsmarted, and she overhears rumbles of uprisings in Panem's districts. Before long it's time for the next round of games, and because it's the 75th anniversary of the competition, something out of the ordinary is in order.
Suzanne Collins's debut novel Gregor the Overlander, the first book in the Underland Chronicles, received wide praise both in the United States and abroad. The series has been a New York Times bestseller and received numerous accolades. |
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*A Most Wanted Man*
by John Le Carre
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With A Most Wanted Man, legendary spymaster John le Carr?ackles the 'War on Terror' with this incisive critique that doubles as a stunning thriller. New spies with new loyalties, old spies with old ones; terror as the new mantra; decent people wanting to do good but caught in the moral maze; all the sound, rational reasons for doing the inhuman thing; the recognition that we cannot safely love or pity and remain good 'patriots' ? this is the fabric of John le Carr? fiercely compelling and current novel A Most Wanted Man.
A half-starved young Russian man in a long black overcoat is smuggled into Hamburg at dead of night.
He has an improbable amount of cash secreted in a purse around his neck. He is a devout Muslim. Or is he? He says his name is Issa. Annabel, an idealistic young German civil rights lawyer, determines to save Issa from deportation. Soon her client's survival becomes more important to her than her own career ? or safety.
In pursuit of Issa's mysterious past, she confronts the incongruous Tommy Brue, the sixty-year-old scion of Brue Fr?s, a failing British bank based in Hamburg. Annabel, Issa and Brue form an unlikely alliance ? and a triangle of impossible loves is born. Meanwhile, scenting a sure kill in the 'War on Terror', the rival spies of Germany, England and America converge upon the innocents.
Thrilling, compassionate, peopled with characters the reader never wants to let go, A work of deep humanity and uncommon relevance to our times. |
*The Magicians*
by Lev Grossman
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A thrilling and original coming-of-age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real world. Quentin Coldwater is brilliant but miserable. A senior in high school, heas still secretly preoccupied with a series of fantasy novels he read as a child, set in a magical land called Fillory.
Imagine his surprise when he finds himself unexpectedly admitted to a very secret, very exclusive college of magic in upstate New York, where he receives a thorough and rigorous education in the craft of modern sorcery. He also discovers all the other things people learn in college: friendship, love, sex, booze, and boredom.
Something is missing, though. Magic doesnat bring Quentin the happiness and adventure he dreamed it would. After graduation he and his friends make a stunning discovery: Fillory is real. But the land of Quentinas fantasies turns out to be much darker and more dangerous than he could have imagined. His childhood dream becomes a nightmare with a shocking truth at its heart.
At once psychologically piercing and magnificently absorbing, The Magicians boldly moves into uncharted literary territory, imagining magic as practiced by real people, with their capricious desires and volatile emotions. Lev Grossman creates an utterly original world in which good and evil arenat black and white, love and sex aren't simple or innocent, and power comes at a terrible price. |
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